Recipes

Flammkuchen

Pizza · Pizza Oven · Breads · German · French

Flammkuchen
Prep 45 min
Cook 4 min
Serves 1 flammkuchen
Level Medium

Alsace’s flame cake: a paper-thin rolled base spread with crème fraîche, onions and lardons, baked hard and fast. It wants a cooler pizza oven than a pizza, which crisps the base.

Untested: I have not cooked this one yet — the pizza oven has not been bought. It is here for the Pizza Ovens dive, and it is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 2.3 g (¾ teaspoon) instant dry yeast
  • 100 g (3½ oz) warm water
  • 200 g (7 oz) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon fine sea salt

½ teaspoon sugar

  • 30 g (2 tablespoons) extra-virgin olive oil

Topping

  • 85 g (3 oz) lardons or thick-cut bacon in small strips

½ white onion, sliced thin

  • 45 g (3 tablespoons) crème fraîche or sour cream

Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

  • 3 g (½ teaspoon) fine sea salt
  • Pinch of black pepper
  • Scallions, leeks or chives, to garnish (optional)

Directions

  1. Dough. Stir the yeast into the warm water. Mix the flour, salt, sugar and oil, add the yeast water, and knead 5–10 minutes by hand into a smooth dough. Rise 30 minutes.
  2. Lardons and onion. Render the lardons slowly over medium heat, about 2 minutes — you don’t want them crisp. Soften the onion in the fat 5–7 minutes. Cool.
  3. Cream. Stir the crème fraîche with the nutmeg, salt and pepper.
  4. Heat the oven until the stone reads about 570 °F (300 °C).
  5. Roll the dough very thin into an oval with a rolling pin. Spread 2–3 heaped tablespoons of the cream, then the onions and lardons.
  6. Bake 3–4 minutes, turning every 20 seconds, until the edges are crisp and golden. Garnish and serve.

Notes

Source Adapted from Chris Cowan, “Traditional Flammkuchen,” on Ooni’s recipe pages. Ooni’s ingredient list omits the amount of lardons; 85 g (3 oz) is this collection’s figure.

Why cooler Ooni bakes it at about 570 °F — “a lower temperature than usual … since this hardens the dough for that signature flaky flammkuchen base.”

Rolled, not stretched Unlike a Neapolitan pizza, flammkuchen dough is rolled thin with a pin.

Temperatures are for the oven floor (stone), read with an infrared thermometer. A pizza oven’s built-in gauge reads the air, which runs much hotter.

The Pizza Ovens dive on the Food site covers the oven, the fire and the dough in depth.